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The agriculture sector receives substantial fiscal subsidies in various forms, including through programs that are linked to production and others that are decoupled. As the sector has reached the technology frontier in production over the last three decades or so, particularly in high‐ and middle‐income countries, it is intriguing to investigate the impact of subsidies on productivity at aggregate level. This study examines the impact of subsidies on productivity growth in agriculture globally using a long time series on the nominal rate of assistance for 42 countries that covers over 80% of agricultural production. The econometric results show heterogenous effects from various subsidy instruments depending on the choice of productivity measure. Regression results suggest a strong positive effect of input subsidies on both output growth and labor productivity. A positive but relatively small impact of output subsidies is found on output growth only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diversified level of agricultural development and directions of evolution of rural areas in the individual EU countries results in complex and diversified problems for the agricultural policy. That was a basic reason of giving a relatively great freedom to the individual member states to choose measures within the individual axes of the Rural Development Programmes. The allocation of expenses to the individual measures Member States should ensure that synergies among the economic, environmental and social aspects and, by assumption, it is supposed to reflect the priorities of rural development. The analysis of the allocation of expenses within the national rural development programmes will indicate similarities and differences of the use of the CAP support in the regional aspect. The main goal of the paper was to determine the priorities of rural development in the individual EU member states. As results from the analysis the specific character of the individual programmes corresponded to the level of development of the individual countries and the needs of the agribusiness and rural areas resulting from that level. The diversification concerning the directions of use of the assets from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development resulted from the different wealth of the societies and rural communities in the individual countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]